by Hockey Guru
Two nights of hockey.
8 Series have begun.
Hockey Guru feels let down so far.
Maybe the anticipation of these matchups was too high. Maybe trying to catch every minute of every game was an impossible task.
There were some great games and great moments - but if felt like something was missing in the opening games this year.
The Hockey Guru (I'm kind of liking this third person thing) - thinks part of the problem is that the NHL has taken on too much of a role in the games.
The NHL being Commissioner Bettman and the league office.
For years, the NHL has pursued a major US network television deal. They haven't landed one. The relentless pursuit has seen the NHL consistently tinkering with the game - not so much to make the game better - but to make it more appealing to the US television market.
Imagine dating a beautiful girl for years - but on every date - she keeps eyeing the guy across the room who has the biggest wallet.That guy has no interest in her. Yet, she keeps buying new clothes, trying new makeup, hairstyles, etc. - all fruitless - as he's just not interested in her; in the essence of her.
Network US television isn't interested in hockey. It never will be. No matter what changes the game makes - it is not going to be accepted (except, of course, if the Commish looked like this).
If you're reading this - you love the game. WE love the game. We wish the game could realize that it's lucky to have us and to be satisfied with us - to stop looking for something better.
Over the years, the NHL has adopted the belief that fighting is the #1 reason the networks won't touch it. So, rules have been implemented to curb fighting.
Now in the playoffs - those rules are curbed further.
These rules - and the subsequent teams adaption to meeting the rules are some of the reason that the Hockey Guru feels unsatisfied with the first tastes of the 2009 playoffs.
While the bench brawls of the past long gone (and sorely missed like a beloved lost relative) - there is developing such a fear of the extra penalties and league suspensions - that the passion and emotion is being replaced with frustration.
Two nights ago, at the end of the Flyers-Penguins game – Daniel Carcillo gave a jab to Maxime Talbot, who dropped like he was shot. No penalty called on the ice – apparently the officials standing 5 feet away felt it wasn’t that big of a deal.
Au contraire mon frère – the league suspended Carcillo for 1 game.
In the same game, 10 seconds earlier, Bill Guerin and Braydon Coburn had one of the lamest fights in playoff history. Guerin challenged Coburn and dropped the gloves, Coburn didn’t fully commit to fighting and merely tied Guerin up and both fell to the ground.
The fight never got going because the NHL has passed down EDICTS that fighting won’t be tolerated in the lasts 5 minutes of a game. Messages can’t be sent! So, Coburn, fearing a suspension, never committed to the fight.
Well, now the off-ice ruling is Carcillo is out, Guerin and Coburn are fine.
It’s ridiculous. The players and teams need to police themselves.
Carcillo gave the jab to Talbot because, ironically, he was afraid that if he merely fought – then he’d get suspended.
The NHL has lost that the playoffs are about passion and emotion. Fans want to see their teams (and teams need to) stand up and send the message “We’re here – we’re going to fight you for every inch of space on this ice and we won’t back down.”
The last 5 minutes of a game don’t matter – it’s 1 game. These are series. The series builds throughout as if it were merely 1 long game. So at the end of the first game – it may be important to the series to have that passion and the message sent. The playoffs series are not about 7 individual games – it’s about 1 series.
Let the passion build, let bad blood and subplots develop.
It only raises the intensity for the entire series – which is a good thing for hockey.
Instead, because of the “crackdown” on fighting – there are more cheapshots, more stickwork and more reasons for fans to be embarrassed.
The Bruins and Canadiens wanted last night to kick the tar out of each other – but settled for lackluster dances.
The crack research department of the Ottawa Hockey League (aka Will) may be able to provide more facts on this – but almost all bench brawls in the past occurred early in a series – when the series hadn’t been decided. There may not be one bench brawl after a series was decided (for example with a team down 3-0 and trailing in the 4th game).
Hockey has honour, the proverbial code – as evidenced by the handshakes at the end of each series.
I fully agree with Guru here. The NHL front office is seemingly trying to curb the raw emotion that makes Playoff hockey such an amazing and awe inspiring event.
ReplyDeleteIf you look back to the 80's, when fighting was truly part of the game, back when a smart man ran the league(John Ziegler). Their was so much rivalry and so much emotion that it was damn near impossible not to see 2-3 fights per game.
For instance, we have seen just a single raw emotion series since 1992 that everybody remembers, and that was the Wings-Avs series when Claude Lemieux cheap shotted Kris Draper. Outside of that, we see nothing that even compares and as long as the NHL tries to ween out fighting and as long as that penguin Gary Bettman is still in office, we'll never see hockey go back to it's roots.
As for now, we are blatantly seeing a double standard when it comes to how to discipline players. Dan Carcillo punches Maxime Talbot right off a face off, gets no penalty and gets a 1 game suspension. The very next night, we see an exact duplication of the Carcillo-Talbot incident. In the Calgary-Chicago series, Mike Cammalleri and Martin Havlat were jabbing and talking trash to one another all game. Then, off a face off in I believe the 3rd period, Cammalleri punches Havlat in the jaw, not the helmet like Carcillo had done to Talbot. Now, the major difference in these situations is that the puck never went towards Havlat, in fact, off the face off, the puck went to the opposite direction. Cammalleri got 2 minutes for roughing and by what we seen the previous night, he should have gotten a 1 game suspension.
But, Colin Campbell stated that the "incidents were not close to being the same as they happened at different points in the respective games". Ok, that really doesn't make sense to me. By that type of standard, if Sean Avery crushed Alex Semin from behind with 5 minutes left in the 3rd period of Game 2 today, he'd get 5, 10, a game and a suspension but if Dion Phaneuf did the exact same thing tonight but in say the 2nd period, he'd get 2 for boarding and nothing else?
The NHL really needs to re-think who they have running this league as I firmly believe Colin Campbell and Gary Bettman are trying to ruin this league by taking the physicality out of the equation so we're left with pretty much basketball on ice.